


He Who Wants a Rose

by azephirin



Series: Charleston [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1000-3000 words, 1000-5000 Words, Alternate Universe, Bad Taste, Bromance, Charleston, Curtain Fic, Flowers, Future Fic, Gen, Happy, Humor, Marriage, Sequel, Shopping, Siblings, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-01
Updated: 2010-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azephirin/pseuds/azephirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He who wants a rose must respect the thorn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Who Wants a Rose

**Author's Note:**

> [As requested](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/63635.html?thread=694419#t694419) by [](http://roguebitch.livejournal.com/profile)[**roguebitch**](http://roguebitch.livejournal.com/), who wanted Sam, Dean, and flower arranging. This is as close as I could get. This takes place in the same verse as "[Epithalamion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/58142)" and "[Early Flowers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/57028)," but I don't think you need to read either to enjoy this. Title and summary from a Persian proverb.

"So, uh, what exactly are you looking for?" Dean asks, looking around with the expression he typically reserves for ghosts with larger amounts of ectoplasm than usual.

Sam sighs and looks for a convenient patch of wall to bang his head against. Unfortunately, there aren't any: The vast array of vendor's stalls takes up all the wallspace in the convention center.

Clearly, the universe hates Sam.

"All she said was 'not fugly,'" he tells Dean.

"They're flowers, dude," Dean says. "Of course they're not fugly. She didn't, I don't know, give you any colors or whatever?"

"She said, and I quote, 'I'll be wearing white. It goes with everything.'"

Dean snorts. "Yeah, that sounds like Lissa. How'd you get roped into doing this, anyway? I thought all the groom had to do was show up."

"Well, you know. We're trying not to spend a ton of money, and she's making the dress, so it seemed like a fair trade for me to do this, since she says she really doesn't care."

"Okay, but first, she's a dressmaker for a living. It's not like that's so difficult for her. And she's got all those flowers out in the yard. Doesn't she know better than you about this kind of stuff?"

"She just plants whatever she thinks is pretty. And a lot of them just kind of...appear."

"And change color randomly," Dean says. "That's the best part. Especially that time with the dogwood."

Sam looks for something to beat Dean's head against. Fortunately for Dean, Sam isn't successful this time around, either. The dogwood's leaves went purple the night Sam and Lissa had sex for the first time; the altered color lasted a week, and Dean hasn't let him forget it.

Dean derails at the sight of cake: one of the vendors, obviously shilling for the wedding crowd, has a sample cake on display. It's white, with a black-outlined Art Deco–style band around the lowest tier; the upper tiers are ornamented with what appear to be black, gray, and white flowers made out of sugar or marzipan. Sam has to admit that it looks incredibly cool, but he'd feel bad eating what amounts to a work of art.

Dean examines it, determines that it's not available for eating, and returns, disgruntled. Then he perks up. "Hey! Black goes with white! You could get her black flowers!"

"Dean, there aren't any black flowers. They don't exist."

"Dye 'em. I mean, the goth chicks manage somehow, don't they? It'd be the most emo wedding ever! You could play Bright Eyes!"

Sam shakes his head. "Why did I bring you along for this?"

"Because you're buying me beer and a burger afterwards."

"I'm fighting to get gay marriage legalized," Sam informs his brother, "because then when you finally decide to make an honest man out of Chris, I can revisit all of this on you."

"Whatever. If the state of South Carolina ever decides that dudes can get married—three words, _un_ and _fucking_ _likely_—and Chris ever gets over his 'marriage is a tool of the man and here are my ninety books of social theory to back it up' thing, I'm finding a temple of Elvis and calling it a day. Hey, those are kind of pretty."

Sam looks over: It's some kind of white thing that looks like a marriage between a plant and a porcupine. "First, it's white. Second, somebody would put their eye out with that." He reads the label: it's a spider dahlia.

"What's wrong with white? I mean, that's what she's wearing."

"White on white?"

"Why not?"

"It seems kind of boring."

Dean shakes his head.

"That's not bad," Sam says, nodding to a sample bouquet, red roses with white interspersed, a few stalls down.

"Yeah, if you want it to look like she got white roses and then bled all over them."

"How do you even come up with these things?"

"That's what it looks like!"

Sam sighs. Pale pink...hell no. Lissa may claim not to care, but she'd kill him. "OK, so how about those?" he says, looking at another sample, this one a gathering of lush, velvety red roses, no white among them.

"The only reason men buy a bunch of red roses like that is when they've cheated on their wives and now they're sorry."

Sam can't help an incredulous glance at his brother.

"It's true. And usually with a giant tacky heart full of chocolates that they bought at the drugstore."

"I really want to know where you come up with these things," Sam says, but he doesn't argue, and they move on to the next row.

"Oh, hey, how about that?" says Dean. "Doesn't look like anybody got blood on it, doesn't look like you're down with OPP."

"Yeah, because it looks like an octopus."

"No, it...well, actually, yeah, it kind of does. But it'll be unique! How many other chicks will have Cthulhu at their weddings?"

Sadly, Sam could see Lissa agreeing with that, but he refuses to entertain anything Lovecraftian and/or cephalopodic on the day of his marriage.

Dean strikes up a conversation with a seller who's down from Virginia. She laughs sympathetically at Sam's plight, and she shows them a combination that shouldn't work but does: pale orange and pink roses, with jasmine blossoms and some kind of funky pods. Sam likes it, Sam thinks Lissa would like it—and it costs four hundred dollars.

Sam thanks the woman, and they keep going. Everything's bizarre-looking (Sam has to tear Dean away from one display that involves black peppers matched with orchids and calla lilies), or really expensive, or white, or all of the above. Finally he says, "Maybe we should just admit defeat and go for that burger and beer."

Dean crosses his arms; Sam knows his brother hates to admit defeat. "You know," Dean says after a moment, "I get why we're here, but I also don't know why we're here."

"You're going to have to explain that one."

"People want flowers at weddings because they're pretty, and they symbolize fertility—even if you don't want kids, that's still what's behind it—and they're just a nice thing to see. And people go nuts about weddings, especially here, because it's supposed to be the most important day in the girl's life, and her family has to impress everybody. But you and Lissa aren't like that, man. You're not wearing a frickin' tux and top hat or whatever, she's making her dress, you're having the reception in the park, and who are you trying to impress?"

"Nobody," Sam says.

"Your girl grows crazy flowers right at your house," Dean says. "Why pay a lot of money for something that doesn't mean anything to you, when she can be carrying some of the irises that you planted when you moved in?"

"That seems cheap."

"Don't make me have to get Chris after you about the heterocapitalist wedding industry."

"Did you just say 'heterocapitalist'?"

"Bite me. Seriously, though. What do you think?"

Sam looks across the convention center, filled to bursting with flower sellers from all over the country. Packed into one space, crowded and noisy, everything loses definition—the blossoms become background, not even ornamentation, just another fixture like the doors, the cubicles, the artificial lights from overhead.

They're getting married in May. Sam thinks of the delicate white of the dogwoods, the classic purple of the irises, the blushing pinks and reds of the azaleas, the exuberant and unpredictable hydrangeas. He's not sure how any or all of these might go together, but he is sure that they'll come up with something. Lissa's got a friend who's an interior designer; perhaps she can clue him in.

"Maybe you're right," he says to Dean.

"As I often am." Dean bumps his shoulder against Sam's, and they lean against each other for a few seconds before Dean straightens and says, "So, how about that burger and beer, anyway?"

"You pick the place," Sam says, and they walk out into the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> The cake Dean sees is [this one](http://www.brides.com/images/editorial/2008_modernbride/06_07_p322_truecolors/01_thumb/006_primary.jpg); I too would feel bad eating it. [Here](http://www.brides.com/weddingstyle/decorations/gallery/editorspick/detail/173453?f=3126%3a57&offset=6)'s the plant/porcupine hybrid. The bouquet that Dean thinks looks like somebody bled on it is on [this page](http://galleries.weddingchannel.com/odb/themes/weddingchannel/Results.aspx?type=19&WC%20Galleries=Flowers%20And%20Decor), second row, center picture. The octopus is in the lower right-hand corner of [this page](http://weddings.theknot.com/gallery/gallery_results.aspx?gallery=20&MsdVisit=1), and I must say I'm with Sam on that one. The four-hundred-dollar bouquet is [here](http://www.brides.com/weddingstyle/decorations/gallery/editorspick/detail/173446?f=3126%3a57&offset=11). And yes, somebody really did put [black peppers in a bridal bouquet](http://www.brides.com/weddingstyle/decorations/gallery/editorspick/detail/173442?f=3126%3a57&offset=15) (the color scheme would please my fellow [Georgia Tech](http://ramblinwreck.cstv.com/index-main.html#00) fans).


End file.
